If he wants to be believable today, the Christian has to commit himself to become an ever more and efficacious teacher of humanity and a witness to a hope narrated by life, and not only by words. This is easy to say, but complicated to be realised.  Yet, we must attempt to give shape to new journeys of Christian existence, within the mess of history, marking new paths of liberation by announcing the reason of our faith and our hope, namely the Risen Lord.

The reflection outline, in preparation for the ecclesial Congress of Verona, demands our becoming able of a narrating Christology. In fact, we have plenty of solemn and solid statements, while we miss vital narrations, practical journeys on the verge of becoming manifestations and revealers.

Keeping in view some orientation signals of the Outline, I shall try to suggest ways of becoming narrators of hope. Thus, I am going to start with a personal memory: In reality, it is not personal, because all of us have somehow seen and lived moments of very high symbolic value, in their simplicity.

A historical icon: John Paul II before the Wailing Wall

When John Paul II visited the Holy Land (March 2000), I was in Jerusalem for my studies, thus I saw him closely when he went to Jerusalem. I was near the “Wailing Wall”, when the Pope went there. The TV made that unique moment visible to everybody.

I felt that the apex of the journey was the moment in which the bent and silent Pope, supported by a walking stick, approached the millinery wall with a small sheet of paper in his hand, to deposit it in one of the many cracks, dug by the time among those millinery enormous stones.

With a short sentence written in that small sheet of paper –like the thousands of other sentences scribbled on rolled sheets and inserted here and there in the cracks-  the Pope fulfilled a gesture of extreme humility, associating himself with all the implorers of history. It was a supplication of forgiveness and mercy, before God, for the centuries of sufferings and injustices inflicted to the children of Abraham. It was also an invocation of a new covenant of hope and justice for the entire humanity. The humblest of gestures – common to all the pilgrims to the Holy Land- enclosed the most prophetic and audacious, the most eloquent and freeing meaning.

Uncertain in his stepping and curved by the sense of historical responsibility, which impended on him like those enormous stones, the Pope fulfilled an armless and penetrating prophecy. In confessing the need of a historical immense re-generation, inspired not to the splendour of theology, but to a creative coherence, namely to a humble faith, to a frail awareness entrusted to mercy and imploring hope, he showed the way out through the symbol of the XX century’s worst tragedies: the Shoah.

It is difficult to say whether that icon has actually attained all the desired effects, whether it has become a non-returning point of our history. Seeing the regurgitation of all kinds and in all the latitudes of this last half decade, we are perplexed and perhaps also anguished and disappointed. Yet, I believe that we must live just this life-style, if we want to regain hope among the dramas of history: to put the modest little sheets of our great dreams, which faith alone can make great and fruitful, into the apparently simplest and humblest cracks.

Undergoing a hard trial

If we want to heal our heart and to disarm ever more aggressive and violent systems, we must exercise the fantasy of the mustard seed, of the handful of leaven, in starts of prophesy charged with a freeing imagination, “with open heart and penetrating eye” (Novo Millennio Ineunte, 58). Sure, we have little to rejoice about, if we look around us. Every morning we wake up with the nightmare that some other disaster might have happened. In fact, it seems that there is never a bottom in the abysses of terror and horror.

“Hope is a frail and rare good, and its focus is often feeble even in the heart of the believers” (Outline, 2).Yet we measure the good Christian testimony today just with the capacity of arousing hope and nurturing it in a culturally not dreamy, nor symbolically lifeless way.

Since “he who hopes is a true witness” (Outline, 5,), our pastoral work and, logically, our spirituality face the very serious challenge of witnessing to hope in a historical passage, which passes too often through the debris of deluded hopes. A passage through expectations turned into nasty phantasms;  through huge projects turned into abysses of horrors and errors, as Benedict XVI speaks of in his first encyclical letter “Deus caritas est” (no.28).

Perhaps we easily take for granted that to proclaim the resurrection of the Lord arouses hope and certainty. It should be so, and it is surely so for many. However, for many more this short-circuit – death-resurrection-hope- risks to be an exercise of mere alienation. They are not able to see re-assuring signals in the mess of their life and of the social scenario. The inherited religion does no longer offer valid supports to cope with the complexity and ambiguity of the actual post-modernity, which entangles everything without any scale of values or highly profiled ideals.

In this universal loss of values, of projects and expectations, while the apocalyptic fears keep on raging, the spelaeologists of the soul dominate. Psychiatrists and novelists, lay guru and chatter boxes, each one excavates and extracts every kind of debris from the deepest layers of the atrophied and drugged psyche: spasms and repentances, anguish and idolatries, manias and infantile narcissisms.  Yet everybody speaks of “spirituality”. In this case spirituality becomes for all of them a wandering, Dionisian and nihilistic adventure. It becomes an evasive wreck after the hunting of “sacred”, vaporous and poisonous sensations.

We witness a cultural and religious mendicancy, a shameful exhibitionism of emotions and divinities, of desperation and mythologies, a fluidity of belongings at disorienting puzzles (see Outline, 1).  Yet, it is just in this context that we must work. We are not a cognitive minority to cope with our own imaginary of an imposing majority. We are also in a context of epochal change of paradigms and models, of languages and symbols, of values and intertwining among different cultures.

We are not going to speak of artificial castrations -often ideologically violent- of the axial codices, like the Christian roots, one of the most evident and contested elements, though it is not the unique aborted reference. During a generation time, or a little more, we have dilapidated a millenary patrimony of religious identity and belonging. We have, in a Promethean way, attempted, as well, to operate a renewal in the name of secularisation, which has ended in an unsuccessful prosthesis because of an ill digested anguish.

In this situation, whose outline I have hurriedly sketched, what is the use of the spirituality referred to by the Verona outline? Though many insist in proclaiming the spirituality might have a redeeming and critical role, I am very diffident, even if I have something to gain out of it.  I say this because I see, somewhere, too much hurry in seeking miraculous solutions, fearing of getting drowned in the ungovernable and devastating apocalypse.

The new “market spirituality”, which offers everything in real time, looks like the commercialisation of the sacred. A God, or at least a divine being so easily available à la carte and ready for use, not needful of instructions, looks to me like a mere exhibitionism of one’s own psychic  and intra-psychic moral or religious contortionism.

Ours may be a time of lapsi (frails) or of parresia (audacity), but also of a frightened   following. Besides honouring God, we must worry to promote life, the religiosity of our daily life.  It is the matter of what Cardinal Martini called “the dialectic of discernments”. This is an exercise we have to fulfil not only with a serious cultural equipment, but also with an involving empathy, charged with sincere affections.

3. An inspiring Biblical icon: the blind man of Barthimeus (Mark 10, 46-52)

Towards the end of February, before setting on the Lenten journey, during the daily masses we listened to the proclamation of chapters 8-10 from the Gospel of Mark. It is about a large collection of radical exigencies of the following, with a constant frightful resistance and worry on behalf of the disciples. Between the episode of the blind from Bethsaida and the healing of Barthimeus, the blind from Jericho (Mark 10, 46-52), Mark puts the great charter of the following, with its challenges and exigencies. It is also a crescendo of contrasts and precautions on behalf of the disciples. Besides confusing “trees and men”, like the anonymous blind man of Bethsaida, they resist tenaciously against the perspectives of Jesus and ask for guarantees. This is why the blind from Jericho becomes the necessary and unavoidable passage for the disciples in the Gospel of Mark.

Let us begin with this Biblical icon, because it shows how we can be disciples, walking materially with Jesus, yet paradoxically without truly sharing his choices and challenges. We are unable of unbinding ourselves from our interior tenacious resistances.

Let us see closer the episode of the blind man from Jericho, by reading the text:

⁴⁶They reached Jericho; and as he left Jericho with his disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus-that is, the son of Timaeus- a blind beggar, was sitting at the side of the road. ⁴⁷When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout and cry out, ‘Son of David, have pity on me.’ ⁴⁸ And many of them scolded him and told him to keep quiet, but he only shouted all the louder, ‘Son of David, have pity on me.’ ⁴⁹ Jesus stopped and said, ‘Call him here.’ So they called the blind man over. ’Courage,’ they said, ‘get up: he is calling you.’ ⁵⁰ So throwing off his cloak, he jumped up and went to Jesus. ⁵¹ Then Jesus spoke, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ The blind man said to him, ‘Rabbuni, let me see again.’ ⁵² Jesus said to him, ‘Go, your faith has saved you.’ And at once his sight returned and he followed him along the road.

A first approach

We are almost at the end of the journey to Jerusalem. Soon after this episode, Mark speaks of the solemn entrance in Jerusalem. As a more specified departing place, we can consider Bethsaida, where another blind man was healed with a series of very meaningful gestures. The blind man, taken out of the village and guided through successive passages clearly reflects the condition of the disciples, who are still unable to get out of the schemes of a nationalistic and miraculous Messianic kingdom.

Now, with the conclusion in Jericho and with this blind man, no longer passive and clinging to himself, but rather active and capable of not getting frightened before reprimands, we have the challenge against the tenacious resistances of the disciples and of the crowd. In fact, here they do not speak of villages left behind,  of a house to go back to, but of cloaks, which are thrown and of a following one starts without hesitation.

Let us also observe that the name of Bartimaeus  (re-duplicated: son of Timaeus) could mean an intertwining between the Hellenistic culture (the name Timaeus is Greek) and the Hebrew identity (the suffix  bar: son of). This is, somehow, a signal of sympathy, used in hiding by Mark, towards the Christians of Hellenistic origin. In fact, this figure looks beautiful and limpid. Moreover, his strong and daring, but sincere and free character, makes of him a model of each disciple who risks everything to see Jesus and to follow him with new eyes.

There are at least three modalities of dialogue in this text. They can be an exemplar grid applicable to us.

The aggressive dialogue

The first approach between the crowd and the blind man provokes problems. They do give him the correct information on the person who is passing by –“When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth” 8v.47) - but do not allow him to shout up his own supplication. It would disturb the procession that follows the Master, perhaps. Alternatively, they may feel his trust and imploration as a public reproach of the uneasiness, which they openly show for the too drastic demands of the Master. We most probably are to highlight the fatigue they experience by following a Master with little ensuring demands, more than a lack of mercy towards Bartimaeus.

They do follow Jesus, but reluctantly, applying the brakes and claiming pretexts of guarantee. This makes them unable to listen to and to share the imploring cry, which disturbs their interior uneasiness. Thus, everything annoys them and they scold the blind man harshly. They follow the Master of mercy, but do not nourish any mercy. They are interested only in the procession, that it may go on without any hindrance, whatever the end will be.  Yet the cry, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” is a traditional imploration expressing the supplications of generations and prophets. According to Mark, Jesus did not like this title, but the faith of Bartimaeus is sure and authentic and Jesus leans on it.

The freeing dialogue

This is the moment of everybody’s transformation; all enter the play, modifying their attitudes and turning towards the blind man. First of all, Jesus stops, allowing himself to be conditioned by the supplication, which outbids the reproaches. He is in a hurry to go to Jerusalem and to give up his life for the solace and salvation of all those who wait for mercy. Now, here is one who waits for mercy and, therefore, Jesus stops and pays attention to his shouted supplication.  Because of this gesture and invitation of Jesus everything changes. “Call him!” (phonésate autòn). They must change their voice, above all the tone of their voice. It must be no longer the tone of a harsh and threatening reproach, but that of a friendly solicitation , of reciprocal trustful and hopeful understanding.

The listening to the word of Jesus changes feelings and gestures. Everything now becomes positive, creatively positive. The people over there pronounce just three words, “Courage! Stand up! He is calling you!”. The blind man soon answers with three exactly symmetrical gestures, “Throws off his cloak, jumps up and goes to Jesus.” The listening to the word of the Master –finally listened to trustfully and without uneasiness- transforms the soul; it frees another history and other relations from within. It is a real surprising transformation.  They free Jesus from protection and from the unapproachable situation, which they had confined him to. The people change their language and participate empathically in a hopeful history.  Bartimaeus makes risky and daring  gestures (throws hi cloak, jumps up).

The healing dialogue

First of all Jesus wants to avoid to appear as a wonder-worker, but he wants also to give to Bartimaeus the possibility of telling his story and expressing his faith. This is a pedagogical moment for all the disciples, more than for him alone. He has a wounded story, a violent trauma, which has destroyed him, yet he has not given up. He has struggled against a very wild mishap trying to go on by being a beggar. He has fought against marginalisation, which they kept on throwing on him in order to crush him. Now, without cloak, naked in his poverty, he stands before Jesus to regain his sight- “Rabbuni let me see again!” (v.51)- to go back to the fullness of life. He stands before Jesus not only to regain his sight, but also to become again a whole person, to live as a protagonist in full freedom, and no longer as a beggar along the streets,

Jesus restores him to full trust, to interior confidence, to regenerating faith, trust and audacity without half measures. He becomes a model of faith also for those who do follow Jesus, but with a frail and opaque faith. The mention of “following him along the road” is much more than a conclusion of the miracle. True disciples are those who, once healed from blindness, from mental and emotive confusion, risk their life with Jesus along the way to the homicide city, without discounts and without cloaks.

This is the true respect and cult due to the Master: getting rid of every cumbersome and re-assuring cloak, jumping up despite uncertainty and insecurity, exposing ourselves in nakedness and poverty, narrating our own fatigue in life, our own struggle and hope. He calls us to follow him without fearing risks or failures, to cross with him the darkness of death and to recognise him as winner of every fear and violence.

A hope, which is castrated by a physical wound, but even more because of a social and religious marginalisation, needs courageous gestures to be re-born and to re-open the way. We shall speak of this in the next paper, which will offer some applications in the light of this icon.